CANNES, France — Early Wednesday morning, Baz Luhrmann’s ‘Elvis’ took over a rewarding Cannes film festival, which relies on glamour, nostalgia, bare young flesh and international media attention to keep his device afloat. Contemporary Hollywood may be running out of ideas and fumes; it certainly has little in common with the best movies being produced today. But Hollywood is a useful construct—part nostalgic fetish, part symbolic standard-bearer—that Cannes uses to its advantage.
Given the state of the major American studios, which release relatively few films and little that is really new, it’s almost a shock that they have everything Cannes wants. But the festival, which is celebrating its 75th anniversary, has always managed to sidestep the crises in the American film industry. It has survived the end of the old studio system and the rise of the Hollywood conglomerate; it continues in the age of streaming. And while Cannes has a reputation as a temple of high art, it is a public relations platform with enormous reach: the red carpet circles the globe.
And so, last week, Tom Cruise was here with “Top Gun: Maverick” (from Paramount) accompanied by fighter jets spewing red, white, and blue smoke. This week it was Luhrmann and “Elvis” (Warner Bros.) who drove the festival to a frenzy. As with most festivals, visitors (including journalists) are generally favorable about what they are going to watch; after all, they are part of an exclusive club. So when Luhrmann and his crew entered the 2,300-seat Lumière theater for the premiere, people jumped up with loud applause. They kept clapping on and off during the showing.
I, well, I was busy lifting my jaw off the floor asking the really big questions. What is this? Is it also a movie? These were some of the thoughts that raced through my head and into my notebook as I watched “Elvis,” which if nothing else gives your eyeballs a workout. Frenzied and wildly overcrowded – with characters, locations, beautiful pouts and the best hits – the image that kept coming to my mind was of an exploding piñata. In particular, the film evoked that fleeting moment when the piñata’s gaudy colored candied contents flew into the air, just before falling into an unholy mess on the ground.
Big-ticket items such as “Top Gun” and “Elvis” are making the most of the fuss at Cannes, but they are just two of the many films that will be screened at the festival by the time it closes on Saturday. The outrageous role of offerings like “Top Gun” here reflects the imbalance in the larger industry, where the box office and media are dominated by Marvel blockbusters and their superheroes. The No. 1 movie in France this week (and last) is Marvel’s “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.” It also tops the box office in Thailand, Germany, Australia, Mexico, South Africa, the Philippines and so on.
There will be films from each of those countries at the festival this year, be it in the official program, in the Cannes Film Market or in one of the simultaneous events that run parallel to the main event. One such independent programme, Critics’ Week, presented ‘Aftersun’ Cleverly, Scottish director Charlotte Wells’ feature debut and one of the strongest films I’ve seen. A memory piece largely set in the near past, it chronicles a young girl’s time with her father on a summer vacation, an idyll that obscures Wells with sensitivity and great control, leading to a crushing climax. (The good news is that A24 has picked up the film for US distribution.)
The decline in the number of theater performances is one of the reasons why festivals like Cannes are even more important for non-industrial cinema. I fear that at some point these kinds of events will be the only place to see international films and other so-called special titles. Last week, the day I saw “Forever Young,” a kinetic drama from Italian-French director Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, I read that the Landmark multiplex was closed in Los Angeles, where I live. While not universally loved, “Forever Young” is the kind of release that might have opened at the Landmark. But the independent side of the industry has been hit hard by the pandemic, although in reality Covid has only exacerbated the precariousness of what was an already fragile ecosystem.
Despite this fragility, audiences in larger US cities still get the chance to see the latest offerings from established directors such as Park Chan-wook (here with “Decision to Leave”) and David Cronenberg (“Crimes of the Future”). Both have track records and distributors who will release these movies in theaters, if only to qualify for awards and spark interest in streaming. Viewers will also likely get a chance to cry at Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne’s “Tori and Lokita,” which revolves around two undocumented children from Africa struggling in an unwelcome Europe.
“Tori and Lokita” is the Dardennes’ strongest, most dramatically convincing film in years, and also their most penetratingly sad. Like some other filmmakers here, the Dardennes seem overwhelmed with despair – for good reason, given the state of the world – even if the fact that they made this film is itself a gesture of hope. However, if the Dardennes weren’t already established ‘art film brands’, their film might have a harder time finding attention, distribution and a berth at another major festival. Films by strangers can get lost in these kinds of events, and so can authentically challenging and narrative off-center work.
While it presents its own challenges, Ukrainian director Sergei Loznitsa’s “The Natural History of Destruction” is likely to find some sort of liberation, if only because of the war in Ukraine. The film is made up entirely of found footage from World War II, almost all of which apparently comes from Nazi, British, and American sources. It’s a tough, skillful, incredibly painful and formally rigorous film that – through its editing – shows that war is barbaric, regardless of the side, an argument that becomes increasingly difficult to support, at least for this viewer, as the film doesn’t go into on Nazi atrocities against Jews.
Many of the movies here will be available online simply because the streaming ie is so huge and needs a steady supply of products to keep going. Films that have not come across well to non-French critics, such as Arnaud Desplechin’s fine family melt “Brother and Sister,” may face some hurdles in gaining distribution in the United States. It’s loud and busy, but also very moving and, for me at least, the shocking opener – which includes a horrific crash with a moving truck – is the most perfect, recognizable representation of what life has felt like during the pandemic.
I worry about the fate of delicate, difficult films like ‘EO’, a sad, often brilliant tale about a donkey by veteran director Jerzy Skolimowski. The film is visually exquisite and dark, but it’s hard to handle. It is best seen with other people. I was devastated, and even though I wasn’t sitting with anyone I know, I was still thankful I wasn’t alone when I watched it. The film is relentless in its vision of human barbarity towards animals, but just being there, silently crying, with others, gave me a sense of community, the kind I always feel when I go to the movies, sit in the dark and my world and mind blown.
